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How do videos, movies and documentaries dedicated to indigenous communities transform the media landscape of South Asia? Based on extensive original research, this book examines how in South Asia popular music videos, activist political clips, movies and documentaries about, by and for indigenous communities take on radically new significances. Media, Indigeneity and Nation in South Asia shows how in the portrayal of indigenous groups by both 'insiders' and 'outsiders' imaginations of indigeneity and nation become increasingly interlinked. Indigenous groups, typically marginal to the nation, are at the same time part of mainstream polities and cultures. Drawing on perspectives from media studies and visual anthropology, this book compares and contrasts the situation in South Asia with indigeneity globally.
List of contents
List of figures
Notes on contributors
Acknowledgements
1 Introduction: screening indigeneity and nation
ERIK DE MAAKER AND MARKUS SCHLEITER
PART I
Vernacular popular culture: movies and music videos
2 Himachali indigeneity: Gaddi music VCDs and expressions of belonging
ANJA WAGNER
3 'Manbhum' videos and their many contours: contexts, contents, and the comic mode as a subversive form
MADHUJA MUKHERJEE
4 Films, flirts, and no dances: a village video night and the circulation of popular Santali VCDs among Birhor people in India
MARKUS SCHLEITER
5 The diffused substance of Bhojpuri indigeneity
AKSHAYA KUMAR
PART II
Politicising indigeneity: video clips and movies
6 Primitive accumulation and "primitive" subjects in postcolonial India: tracing the myriad real and virtual lives of mediatised indigeneity activism
UDAY CHANDRA
7 Giving voice? Experiences of collaboration on indigenous video-making projects
RADHIKA BORDE
8 From clanships to cyber communities: India's Northeast in the digital age
DAISY HASAN
9 Projecting and rejecting indigeneity: 'From Bangladesh with Love'
CARMEN BRANDT
PART III
Documenting and fictionalising indigeneity
10 Made in India: ethnographic films beyond visual anthropology
GIULIA BATTAGLIA
11 Critiquing stereotypes? Documentary as dialogue with the Garo
ERIK DE MAAKER
12 YouTube and the rising trend of indigenous folk dance: the case of the sakela dance of the Rai in Nepal and their diaspora
MARION WETTSTEIN
13 Identity, indigeneity, and cultural props: portraying the Tai-Ahoms in two Assamese films based on the legend of Joymati
ARZUMAN ARA
14 Polyandry, sexuality and the (mis)representation of indigenous women on Indian screens. The film Sonam: The Fortunate One
MARA MATTA
15 Afterword: meditations on media in digital times
ROBIN JEFFREY
Index
